Guard deployed to Ohio hospitals
Governor addresses staff shortages due to COVID
As COVID-19 cases continue to climb across Ohio, Gov. Mike Dewine announced the deployment of 1,050 Ohio National Guard members into local hospitals to help address their staffing challenges.
“Earlier in the pandemic, our concern was about beds, about space,” he said in a Friday morning news conference. “Today, it is about personnel.”
The guard members will begin their deployments Monday and most of them (900) will provide transport assistance, food services and environmental cleanup work because they do not have formal medical training.
Only 150 of the national guard members being deployed are trained nurses and EMTS.
The governor said that was an intentional choice. Many of these service members have civilian jobs in Ohio hospitals, and Dewine didn’t want to “cannibalize” the staff from one location for another.
The nurses and EMTS will primarily be deployed to hospitals in Akron, Canton, Cleveland and Wooster, where Dewine says the need for support staff is greatest.
The Cleveland Clinic announced Friday morning that it would be extending its postponement of non-urgent surgeries through the end of 2021. The clinic had hoped to resume these surgeries on Monday.
Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center also said Friday that it will postpone all non-emergent elective surgeries that require an overnight stay, beginning Jan. 3, and it wouldn’t schedule any new cases between now and then.
And in the Cincinnati region, hospitals are full and are facing a “dire situation” ahead of what could be the highest surge in demand of the 21-month pandemic, a leader of the region’s health care industry conference board said Thursday.
In addition to the Ohio National Guard, the governor announced he working with an undisclosed staffing company to bring in nurses from out of state.
Dewine declined to say how many workers the state was trying to get, only saying “it’s a fairly big number .... and we anticipate this will be a significant help.”
This isn’t the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic that Dewine had called on the National Guard.
Through July, more than 4,000 Ohio National Guard members were deployed on 70 missions across the state to assist local, county, and state partners, according to a news release issued then.
The troops assisted in providing more than 360,000 COVID-19 vaccinations; received, packed, and distributed more than 150 million pounds of food and groceries to over 2.9 million Ohioans; and provided temporary medical staffing to more than 30 long-term care facilities.
When asked how long this new deployment might last, the governor said he didn’t have an end date in mind.
“We are going to keep them in there as long as they are needed,” Dewine said.
The governor’s briefing comes a day after the governor and his wife, Fran, reported being exposed to someone who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Dewine said he and his wife again tested negative on Friday.
Anna Staver is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau. It serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.